Interaction between tetanolysin and mycoplasma cell membrane

Pore-forming toxins

“…The prerequisite for a CBT to attack a membrane is the presence in it of cholesterol [48,56,57]. The ability of the CBTs to actually bind cholesterol has been visually demonstrated [58] and we will assume that cholesterol is a receptor if not the receptor, since the evidence for this is entirely compelling [48,59,60].…”

Mechanism of tetanolysin-induced membrane damage: studies with black lipid membranes

“…In our first BLM experiments using phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol we found that tetanolysin exhibited the same cholesterol specificity as in liposomes (1, 17) and cells (18): below 30% cholesterol there was no effect of tetanolysin on bilayer conductance, and above 30% the BLM ruptured (data not shown). Although BLM rupture indicated that tetanolysin grossly perturbed its structure, the phosphatidylcholine-cholesterol BLM was not amenable to the study of tetanolysin-lipid interaction, since we only observed all-ornone lysis.…”

“…Two models for the permeability caused by this toxin have been proposed. Rottem et al (18) hypothesized that the target membrane becomes unstable by complexation of the toxin with cholesterol, thereby perturbing the interaction of cholesterol with phospholipids. Alving et al (1) found that in cholesterol-containing liposomes, the lytic activity of tetanolysin was not influenced by temperature or by the fatty acyl chain length of liposomal phospholipids.…”

Heterologous immunoaffinity chromatography in the purification of streptolysin O

“…The last has been demonstrated by neutralization of activity by heterologous antisera as well as by heterologous immune precipitation [3,4]. Several of these proteins have been purified to various degrees of homogeneity by conventional techniques of protein separation [5][6][7][8]. Streptolysin O has been purified to homogeneity by the use of a rather lengthy series of column chromatographic procedures [9].…”